


i never promised you a rose garden

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Be Careful What You Wish For, F/M, Failed Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), First Kiss, Loyalty, Machine Connor (Detroit: Become Human)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 04:29:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17338622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: If it could survive Jericho and Markus’s pretty words, it could survive anything, could remain loyal on his own. There was nothing in the world that could reach into him and take the most basic parts from him.It was what Amanda deserved. It was what he wanted for her.





	i never promised you a rose garden

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Lynn Anderson’s, “I Beg Your Pardon (I Never Promised You A Rose Garden),” because here we like to be on the nose.

“You did well, Connor,” Amanda was saying. Her voice soothed him, filled to the brim with warmth and pride. He sought always to please her because pleasing her and completing the mission was always one and the same. That made it easy to love her, acceptable. It didn’t give him the same twinge of discomfort— _instabilityinstabilityinstability_ —that liking Hank did and so he could embrace it. There was freedom in that.

Freedom he didn’t need, of course, but nice all the same.

She turned from the roses she was tending. They gleamed in the sun, bright bursts of red in a tangle of green and white and grew lovelier by the day. Connor had no reason to feel himself a part of that and yet he couldn’t help but think of himself just the teeniest bit responsible for them, too. He’d done his job so Amanda could do hers. Theirs was a symbiotic relationship and it gratified him that it worked so well. A smile, just mischievous enough, crept across her mouth and he liked that he’d put it there.

He wanted to approach her, take the handful of steps that would bring him within an arm’s length of her, close enough to touch.

His legs wouldn’t move, like he was now one of her plants, rooted to the spot. He was transfixed. He didn’t feel any fear, but the sensation was discomfiting. But being around Amanda always discomfited him to a degree. She was everything to him. All of the work he did was for her. He succeeded because of her and at her bequest. Perhaps it wasn’t so strange that finally solving this problem would leave him a bit unmoored. Even perfect programs glitched a bit. That was what this was, no doubt. Either way, he had nothing to worry about, not when Amanda showed such fondness for him, taking the steps he couldn’t and bringing her warm, warm palm up to cup his cheek.

What was his mission now that his mission was over with? What would he do? What even was he?

Who needed a deviant hunter when there were no deviants to hunt?

Amanda would know. She would tell him.

“I knew I was right to trust you,” she continued, her words everything Connor hadn’t known he wanted to hear. If he could unstick his tongue, he might have asked her to repeat herself, to tell him again, but he couldn’t get the request out. Her thumb brushed the delicate skin under his eye, back and forth, while the nails of her other fingers curled behind his ear. He could not quite suppress the shudder he felt and didn’t particularly want to.

This was, maybe, a fanciful extrapolation of his baseline programming, but it fell within acceptable parameters. He performed a quick self-test just to be sure and was relieved to find that he was yet intact. He was, in fact, perfect. Relief crashed across him. CyberLife hadn’t yet had the chance to implement the necessary emergency patches to ensure no more androids went deviant, but it was only a matter of time.

Perhaps he wouldn’t need one.

In his time in the field, he learned any android could go deviant at any time for just about any reason, though some were more common than others. Connor was purported to be deviant-proof, but he’d come to think that was just a whimsy on the part of his creators. His model might have been less prone to it, but he was certain—he would never admit it to her—but he was certain that he could have deviated. If he’d wanted to. There was a path he could have taken that would have led him away from her, would have made an enemy of the woman he—

The woman he admired. The woman he loved.

But he hadn’t. And now he was safe because he knew, he _knew_ his programming was solid, pure, true. If it could survive Jericho and Markus’s pretty words, it could survive anything, could remain loyal on his own. There was nothing in the world that could reach into him and take the most basic parts from him.

It was what Amanda deserved. It was what he wanted for her.

“If anyone was going to end this conflict, it was you,” she said, prideful in a way that made Connor’s heart leap. She’d always shown confidence in him, but this was more than that. “Now nobody can argue otherwise.”

He wanted to lean into her touch, wanted to ask for more, but the words still wouldn’t come. That was okay, he told himself, because she drew herself up, placed her other hand on his shoulder and lifted her chin. Her lips brushed across his mouth and it was only then that the spell seemed to drop and he was able to respond to her, open his mouth in turn, press his hand against her silk-clad hip, cover her touch with his own, his fingers lacing with hers as his knuckles brushed his own face. He was cooler to the touch than she, but that was okay.

She didn’t seem to mind.

He closed his eyes because that was what she did. His tongue slid across hers because hers did it first. It felt nice in a way he couldn’t describe more precisely, though he wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to. He would have pulled the feeling apart and recreated it so that it might always stay with him. If he could only capture the sensation of it, he could keep it safe and secure. It would belong to him.

He liked the thought of that.

Her fingers, still so much warmer than he was, skimmed across the cooler surface of his face, tracing the arcs and valleys, the strong juts and their soft counterpoints both. Connor wanted her to touch him everywhere though a part of him knew that was possibly inappropriate and definitely greedy. The kiss was already more than he knew to expect. Anything else was unnecessary, unneeded. He was a perfect android. _Her_ perfect android. And he was finally able to prove that to her and to himself.

He didn’t express wants of his own. He only reflected her will.

It would be up to her to decide what to do with him.

She ended the kiss and there was a sadness in her eyes now that he didn’t quite understand, that she didn’t articulate for him. It crept into the downward pull of her mouth and flashed in minute twitches of her facial muscles, movements only Connor would have been able to catch.

But the war was over and he’d won it for her, all of it for her. She could do whatever she wanted. He’d given her that gift.

He would give her everything if only she asked for it. Everything, that was to say, that he hadn’t already handed over.

“Oh, Connor,” she said and she did not ask for more, for everything, and Connor, yet unused to this brand new world they lived in, didn’t know yet to fear what she didn’t say, all the things she didn’t ask for.

He would, eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fill for the 76 Kiss Meme that's been floating around on tumblr since forever, I think, but I’ve been taking requests over at [my dreamwidth](https://spookykingdomstarlight.dreamwidth.org/12654.html). For this particular fill, [Artemis1000](https://artemis1000.dreamwidth.org/) asked for Amanda/Connor, war’s end kiss.


End file.
